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SERIES FOR 1896 

Xittle Sourness to tbe Ibomes of 
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The papers below specified, were, with the 
exception of that contributed by the editor, 
Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late 
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near ly half a century since this series (which 
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No. 1, Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. 
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" 8, Audubon, by Parke Godwin. 
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" 10, Longfellow by Geo. Wm. Curtis. 

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The above papers, which will form the 
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7$ 3331 



WHITMAN. 



167 



All seems beautiful to me. 

I can repeat over to men and women, You have 

done such good to me I would do the same 

to you, 
I will recruit for myself and you as I go. 
I will scatter myself among men and women as 

I go, 
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among 

them. 

— Song of the Open Road. 



168 



WHITMAN. 



BY ELBERT HUBBARD. 



MAX NORDAU wrote a book- 
wrote it with his tongue in his 
cheek, a dash of vitriol in the 
ink, and with a pen that scratched. 

And the first critic who seemed to place 
a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zang- 
will (who has no Christian name). Mr. 
Zangwill made an attempt to swear out 
a writ de lunatico inquirendo against his 
Jewish brother, on the ground that the 
first symptom of insanity is often the de- 
lusion that others are insane ; and this 
being so, Dr. Nordau was not a safe sub- 
169 






TIGlbitman 



ject to be at large. But the Assize of 
Public Opinion denied the petition and 
the dear people bought the book at from 
three to five dollars per copy. Printed 
in several languages, its sales have 
mounted to a hundred thousand volumes, 
and the author's net profit is full forty 
thousand dollars. No wonder is it that, 
with pockets full to bursting, Dr. Nordau 
goes out behind the house and laughs 
uproariously whenever he thinks of how 
he has worked the world ! 

If Dr. Talmage is the Barnum of The- 
ology, surely we may call Dr. Nordau the 
Barnum of Science. His agility in ma- 
nipulating facts is equal to Hermann's 
now-you-see-it and now-you-don't with 
pocket handkerchiefs. Yet Hermann's 
exhibition is worth the admittance fee 
and Nordau' s book (seemingly written 
in collaboration with Jules Verne and 
Mark Twain) would be cheap for a dol- 
lar. But what I object to is Prof. Her- 
mann's disciples posing as Sure-Enough 
Materializing Mediums and Prof. Lom- 
170 



•QClbitman 



broso's followers calling themselves Sci- 
entists, when each goes forth without 
scrip or purse with no other purpose 
than to supply themselves with both. 

Yet it was Barnum himself who said 
that the public delights in being hum- 
bugged, and strange it is that we will 
not allow ourselves to be thimble-rigged 
without paying for the privilege. 

Nordau's success hinged on his auda- 
cious assumption that the public knew 
nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet 
Plato explained that the opposite of 
things look alike, and sometimes are 
alike, and that was quite awhile ago. 

The multitude answered : " Thou hast a 
devil " ; Many of them said : " He hath a 
devil and is mad" ; Festus said with a 
loud voice : " Paul, thou art beside thy- 
self.' ' And Nordau shouts in a voice more 
heady than that of Pilate, more throaty 
than that of Festus— " Mad— Whitman 
was — mad beyond the cavil of a doubt ! " 

In 1862, Lincoln, looking out of a win- 
dow (before lilacs last in the dooryard 
171 



TKUbftman 



bloomed) on one of the streets of Wash- 
ington, saw a workingman in shirt sleeves 
go by. Turning to a friend, the President 
said : " There goes a man ! " The ex- 
clamation sounds singularly like that of 
Napoleon on meeting Goethe. But the 
Corsican's remark was intended for the 
poet's ear, while Lincoln did not know 
who his man was, although he came to 
know him afterward. 

Lincoln in his early days was a work- 
ingman — an athlete, and he never quite 
got the idea out of his head (and I am 
glad) that he was still a hewer of wood. 
He once told George William Curtis that 
he more than half expected yet to go 
back to the farm and earn his daily 
bread by the work that his hands found 
to do ; he dreamed of it nights, and when- 
ever he saw a splendid toiler, he felt like 
hailing the man as brother and striking 
hands with him. When Lincoln saw 
Whitman strolling majestically past, he 
took him for a stevedore or possibly the 
foreman of a construction gang. 
172 



TKHbttman 



"Whitman was fifty-one years old then. 
His long flowing beard was snow white 
and the shock that covered his Jove- 
like head was iron grey. His form was 
that of an Apollo who had arrived at 
years of discretion. He weighed even 
two hundred pounds and was just six 
feet high. His plain check cotton shirt 
was open at the throat to the breast ; 
and he had an independence, a self-suffi- 
ciency, and withal a cleanliness, a sweet- 
ness, a gentleness, that told that, although 
he had a giant's strength, he did not use 
it like a giant. Whitman used no to- 
bacco, neither did he apply hot and re- 
bellious liquors to his blood and with 
unblushing forehead woo the means of 
debility and disease. Up to his fifty- 
third year he had never known a sick 
day, although at thirty his hair had be- 
gun to whiten. He had the look of age 
in his youth and the look of youth in his 
age that often marks the exceptional man. 

But at fifty-three his splendid health 
was crowded to the breaking strain. 
173 



•fldbftman 



How ? Through caring for wounded, 
sick, and dying men : hour after hour, 
day after day, through the long 'silent 
watches of the night. From 1864 to the 
day of his death in 1892, physically, he 
was a man in ruins. But he did not 
wither at the top. Through it all he 
held the healthy optimism of boyhood, 
carrying with him the perfume of the 
morning and the lavish heart of youth. 

Doctor Bucke, who was superintendent 
of a nospital for "the insane for fifteen 
years, and the intimate friend of Whit- 
man all the time, has said : "His build, 
his stature, his exceptional health of 
mind and body, the size .and form 
of his features, his cleanliness of mind 
and body, the grace of his movements 
and gestures, the grandeur, and espe- 
cially the magnetism of his presence ; 
the charm of his voice, his genial kindly 
humor ; the simplicity of his habits 
and tastes, his freedom from conven- 
tion, the largeness and beauty of his 
manner ; his calmness and majesty ; his 
174 



TKtbttman 



charity and forbearance — his entire unre- 
sentfulness under whatever provocation ; 
his liberality, his universal sympathy with 
humanity in all ages and lands, his broad 
tolerance, his catholic friendliness, and 
his unexampled faculty of attracting af- 
fection, all prove his perfectly propor- 
tioned manliness." 

But Whitman differed from the disci- 
ple of Lombroso in two notable particu- 
lars : He had no quarrel with the world, 
and he did not wax rich. "One thing 
thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we 
might have said to the poet, " you are not 
a financier." He died poor. But this is 
not proof of degeneracy save on 'Change. 
When the children of Count Tolstoy en- 
deavored to have him adjudged insane, 
the Court denied the application and 
voiced the wisest decision that ever came 
out of Russia : A man who gives away 
his money is not necessarily more foolish 
than he who saves it. 

And with Mr. Horace Iy. Traubel I say : 
Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw. 
175 



II. 



SOME men make themselves homes ; 
and others there be who rent 
rooms. Walt Whitman was essen- 
tially a citizen of the world : the world 
was his home and mankind were his 
friends. There was a quality in the man 
peculiarly universal : a strong, virile poise 
that asked for nothing, but took what it 
needed. 

He loved men as brothers, yet his 
brothers after the flesh understood him 
not ; he loved children — they turned to 
him instinctively — but he had no children 
of his own ; he loved women and yet this 
strongly sexed and manly man never 
loved a woman. And I might here say as 
Philip Gilbert Hamerton said of Turner, 
" He was lamentably unfortunate in this : 
throughout his whole life he never came 
176 



•Gdbttman 



under the ennobling and refining influ- 
ence of a good woman." 

It requires two to make a home. The 
first home was made when a woman, 
cradling in her loving arms a baby, 
crooned a lullaby. All the tender senti- 
mentality we throw around a place is the 
result of the sacred thought that we live 
there with someone else. It is ourhome. 
The home is a tryst — the place where we 
retire and shut the world out. Lovers 
make a home just as birds make a nest, 
and unless a man knows the spell of the 
divine passion I hardly see how he can 
have a home at all. He only rents a 
room. 

Camden is separated from the city of 
Philadelphia by the Delaware River. 
Camden lies low and flat — a great sandy, 
monotonous waste of straggling build- 
ings. Here and there are straight rows 
of cheap houses, evidently erected by 
staid, broad-brimmed speculators from 
across the river, with eyes on the main 
chance. But they reckoned ill, for the 
177 



TWlbttman 



town did not boom. Some of these 
houses have marble steps and white barn 
door shutters, that might withstand a 
siege. When a funeral takes place in 
one of these houses the shutters are tied 
with strips of mournful black alpaca for 
a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, 
express drivers, and mechanics largely 
make up citizens of Camden. Of course, 
Camden has its smug corner where pros- 
perous merchants most do congregate : 
where they play croquet in the front 
yards, and have window boxes, and a 
piano and veranda chairs and terra cotta 
statuary, but for the most part the houses 
of Camden are rented, and rented cheap. 
Many of the domiciles are frame and 
have the happy tumble-down look of the 
back streets in Charleston or Richmond 
— those streets where white trash merges 
off into prosperous colored aristocracy. 
Old hats do duty in keeping out the fresh 
air where providence has interfered and 
broken out a pane ; blinds hang by a 
single hinge ; bricks on the chimney tops 
178 



Wbitman 



threaten the passers-by ; stringers and 
posts mark the place where proud picket 
fences once stood — the pickets having 
gone for kindling long ago. In the warm 
summer evenings men in shirt-sleeves sit 
on the front steps and stolidly smoke, 
while children pile up sand in the streets 
and play in the gutters. 

Parallel with Mickle Street, a block 
away, are railway tracks. There noisy 
switch engines, that never keep Sabbath, 
puff back and forth, day and night, send- 
ing showers of soot and smoke when the 
wind is right (and it usually is) straight 
over Number 328, where, according to 
John Addington Symonds and William 
Michael Rossetti, lived the mightiest seer 
of the century — the man whom they 
rank with Socrates, Epictetus, St. Paul, 
Michael Angel o, and Dante. 

It was in August of 1883 that I first 
walked up that little street — a hot sultry 
summer evening. There had been a 
shower that turned the dust of the un- 
paved roadway to mud. The air was 
179 



•tfHbftman 



close and muggy. The houses, built right 
up to the side-walks, over which in little 
gutters the steaming sewage ran, seemed 
to have discharged their occupants into 
the street to enjoy the cool of the day. 
Barefooted children by the score paddled 
in the mud. All the steps were filled 
with loungers ; some of the men had 
discarded not only coats but shirts as 
well and now sat in flaming red under- 
wear, holding babies. 

They say that " woman's work is never 
done," but to the women of Mickle 
Street this does not apply, but stay ! per- 
haps their work is never done. Anyway, 
I remember that women sat on the curbs 
in calico dresses or leaned out of the 
windows, and all seemed supremely free 
from care. 

" Can you tell me where Mr. Whitman 
lives?" I asked a portly dame who was 
resting her elbows on a window-sill. 

"Who?" 

"Mr. Whitman!" 

" You mean Walt Whitman ? " 
180 



TWlbitman 



"Yes." 

"Show the gentleman, Molly, he'll 
give you a nickel, I 'm sure ! " 

I had not seen Molly. She stood be- 
hind me, but as her mother spoke she 
seized tight hold of one of my fingers, 
claiming me as her lawful prey, and all 
the other children looked on with en- 
vious eyes as little Molly threw at them 
glances of scorn and marched me off. 
Molly was five, going on six, she told 
me. She had bright red hair, a grimy 
face and little chapped feet that made 
not a sound as we walked. She got her 
nickel and carried it in her mouth and 
this made conversation difficult. After 
going one block she suddenly stopped, 
squared me around and pointing said, 
"Them is he ! " and disappeared. 

In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hall- 
way, a little back from the door of a 
plain weather-beaten house, sat the coat- 
less philosopher, his face and head 
wreathed in a tumult of snow white hair. 

I had a little speech, all prepared 
181 



TKttbttman 



weeks before and committed to memory, 
that I intended to repeat, telling him 
how I had read his poems and admired 
them. And further I had stored away in 
my mind a few blades from Leaves of 
Grass that I proposed to bring out at the 
right time as a sort of certificate of char- 
acter. But when that little girl jerked 
me right-about-face and heartlessly de- 
serted me, I stared dumbly at the man 
whom I had come a hundred miles to see. 
I began angling for my little speech but 
could not fetch it. 

" Hello ! " called the philosopher, out 
of the white aureole ; " Hello ! come 
here, boy ! " 

He held out his hand and as I took it 
there was a grasp with meaning in it. 

" Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man 
seated on the step smoking a cob pipe. 

" The old woman 's calling me," said the 
swarthy Joe. Joe evidently held truth 
lightly. ''So long, Walt!" 

" Good-bye, Joe. Sit down, lad, sit 
down ! " 

182 



"Mbitman 



I sat in the doorway at his feet. 

"Now isn't it queer — that fellow is a 
regular philosopher and works out some 
great problems, but he 's ashamed to ex- 
press 'em. He could no more give you 
his best than he could fly. Ashamed I 
s'pose, ashamed of the best that is in 
him. We are all a little that way — 
all but me— I try to write my best, 
regardless of whether the thing sounds 
ridiculous or not — regardless of what 
others think or say or have said. Ashamed 
of our holiest, truest, and best ! Is it not 
too bad ? 

" You are twenty-five now? well boy, 
you may grow until you are thirty and 
then you will be as wise as you ever 
will be. Have n't you noticed that men 
of sixty have no clearer vision than men 
of forty ? One reason is that we have 
been taught that we know all about life 
and death and the mysteries of the grave. 
But the main reason is that we are 
ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. 
Jesus expressed his own individuality 
183 



imbitman 



perhaps more than any man we know of, 
and so he wields a wider influence than 
any other. And this though we only 
have a record of just twenty -seven days 
of his life. 

"Now that fellow that just left is an 
engineer, and he dreams some beautiful 
dreams, but he never expresses them to 
any one, only hints them to me, and this 
only at twilight. He is like a weasel or 
mink or a whip-poor-will, he comes out 
only at night. 

" ' If the weather was like this all the 
time people would never learn to read and 
write,' said Joe to me just as you arrived. 
And isn't that so? Here we can count 
a hundred people up and down this street, 
and not one is reading, not one but that 
is just lolling about, except the children 
and they are only happy when playing in 
the dirt. Why if this tropical weather 
should continue we would all slip back 
into South Sea Islanders ! You can only 
raise good men in a little strip around the 
North Temperate Zone — when you get 
184 



TlGlbitman 



out of the track of the glacier a tender 
hearted, sympathetic man of brains is an 
accident." 

Then the old man suddenly ceased and 
I imagined that he was following the 
thought out in his own mind. We sat 
silent for a space. The twilight fell, and 
a lamp-lighter lit the street lamp on the 
corner. He stopped an instant to cheerily 
salute the poet as he past. The man sit- 
ting on the doorstep, across the street, 
smoking, knocked the ashes out of his 
pipe on his boot heel and went indoors. 
Women called their children, who did 
not respond, but still played on. Then 
the creepers were carried in, to be fed 
their bread and milk and put to bed ; and 
shortly shrill feminine voices ordered the 
older children indoors, and some obeyed. 

The night crept slowly on. 

I heard old Walt chuckle behind me, 
talking incoherently to himself, and then 
he said : 

"You are wondering why I live in 
such a place as this ? " 
185 



THUbitman 



"Yes, that is exactly what I was think- 
ing of!" 

"You think I belong in the country, in 
some quiet shady place. But all I have 
to do is to shut my eyes and go there. 
No man loves the woods more than I — I 
was born within sound of the sea— down 
on Long Island and I know all the songs 
that the sea-shell sings. But this babble 
and babel of voices pleases me better 
especially since my legs went on a strike, 
for although I can't walk, you see I still 
mix with the throng, so I suffer no loss. 
In the woods a man must be all hands 
and feet. I like the folks, the plain, 
ignorant unpretentious folks ; and the 
youngsters that come and slide on my 
cellar door do not disturb me a bit. I 'm 
different from Carlyle — you know he had 
a noise-proof room where he locked him- 
self in. Now when a huckster goes by, 
crying his wares I open the blinds, and 
often wrangle with the fellow over the 
price of things. But the rogues have got 
into a way lately of leaving truck for me 
186 



TQbitman 



and refusing pay. To-day an Irishman 
passed in three quarts of berries and 
walked off pretending to be mad because 
I offered to pay. When he was gone, I 
beckoned to the babies over the way — 
they came over and we had a feast. 

"Yes, I like the folks around here; I 
like the women, and I like the men, and 
I like the babies, and I like the young- 
sters that play in the alley and make 
mud pies on my steps. I expect to stay 
here until I die." 

rt You speak of death as a matter of 
course — you are not afraid to die ? " 

1 ' Oh, no, my boy, death is as natural as 
life, and a deal kinder. But it is all 
good — I accept it all and give thanks — 
you have not forgotten my chant to 
death?" 

"Not I!" 

I repeated a few lines from Drum Taps. 

He followed me, rapping gently with 

his cane on the floor, and with little 

interjectory remarks of "That's so!" 

"Very true ! " " Good, good ! " And 

187 



TMlbitman 



when I faltered and lost the lines he 
picked them up where "The voice of 
my spirit tallied the song of the bird." 
In a strong clear voice but a voice full 
of sublime feeling he repeated : 

Come, lovely and soothing Death, 

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, 
arriving, 

In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 

Sooner or later, delicate Death. 

Praised be the fathomless universe 

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge 
curious, 

And for love, sweet love— but praise ! praise ! 
praise 

For the sure enwinding arms of cool, enfolding 
Death. 

Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet, 

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest 
welcome ? 

Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all, 

I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed 
come, come unfalteringly 

Approach, strong deliveress, 

When it is so, when thou hast taken them 

I joyously sing the dead, 

I^ost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, 

I,aved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. 

From me to thee glad serenades, 

Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adorn- 
ments and feastings for thee, 

And the sights of the open landscape and the 
high spread sky are fitting, 

And life and the fields, and the huge and thought- 
ful night. 

188 



TiClbitman 



The night in silence under many a star, 

The ocean shore and the husky whispering 
wave whose voice I know, 

And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well 
veil'd Death, 

And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the 
myriad fields and the prairies wide, 

Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teem- 
ing wharves, and ways, 

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O 
Death. 

The last playing youngster had silently 
disappeared from the streets. The door- 
steps were deserted — save where across the 
way a young man and maiden sat in the 
gloaming conversing in low monotone. 

The clouds had drifted away. 

A great yellow star shone out above the 
chimney tops in the east. 

I arose to go. 

" I wish you 'd come oftener — I see you 
so seldom, lad," said the old man, half 
plaintively. 

I did not explain that we had never 

met before — that I had come from New 

York purposely to see him. He thought 

he knew me. And so he did — as much 

189 



■Qdbitman 



as I could impart. The rest was irrele- 
vant. As to my occupation or name, what 
booted it ? — he had no curiosity concern- 
ing me. I grasped his outstretched hand 
in both of my own. 

He said not a word ; neither did I. 

I turned and made my way to the ferry 
— past the whispering lovers on the door- 
steps, and over the railway tracks where 
the noisy engines puffed. As I walked 
on board the boat the wind blew up cool 
and fresh from the west. The star in the 
east grew brighter, and other stars came 
out, reflecting themselves like gems in 
the dark blue of the Delaware. 

There was a soft sublimity in the sound 
of the bells that came echoing over the 
waters. My heart was very full for I had 
felt the thrill of being in the presence of 
a great and loving soul. 

It was the first time and the last that I 
ever saw Walt Whitman. 



190 



III. 

MOST writers bear no message : 
they carry no torch. Some- 
times they excite wonder, or 
they amuse and divert — divert us from 
our work. To be diverted to a cer- 
tain degree may be well, but there is 
a point where earth ends and cloudland 
begins, and even great poets occasionally 
befog the things which they would reveal. 
Homer was seemingly blind to much 
simple truth ; Virgil carries you away 
from earth ; Horace was undone without 
his Macaenas ; Dante makes you an exile ; 
Shakespeare was singularly silent con- 
cerning the doubts, difficulties, and com- 
mon lives of common people ; Byron's 
Corsair life does not help you in your 
toil, and in his fight with English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers we crave neutral- 
191 



•cmbitman 



ity ; to be caught in the meshes of Pope's 
Dunciad is not pleasant ; and Lowell's 
Fable for Critics is only another Dun- 
ciad. But above all poets who have ever 
lived the author of Leaves of Grass was 
the poet of humanity. 

Milton knew all about Heaven, and 
Dante conducts us through Hell, but it 
was left for Whitman to show us Earth. 
His voice never goes so high that it breaks 
an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl 
and snarl at things it does not understand 
and not understanding does not like. 
He was so great that he had no envy, and 
his insight was so sure that he had no 
prejudice. He never boasted that he was 
higher, nor claimed to be less than any 
of the other sons of men. He met all on 
terms of absolute equality, mixing with 
the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the op- 
pressed, the cultured, the rich— simply 
as brother with brother. And when he 
said to the outcast, "Not till the sun 
excludes you will I exclude you," he 
voiced a sentiment worthy of a god. 
192 



IMbitman 



He was brother to the elements, the 
mountains, the seas, the clouds, the sky. 
He loved them all and partook of them 
all in his large, free, unselfish, untram- 
melled nature. His heart knew no limits, 
and feeling his feet mortis'd in granite 
and his footsteps ten on 'd in infinity he 
knew the amplitude of time. 

Only the great are generous ; only the 
strong are forgiving. Like Lot's wife, 
most poets lookback over their shoulders ; 
and those who are not looking backward 
insist that we shall look into the future, 
and the vast majority of the whole scrib- 
bling rabble accept the precept, "Man 
never is, but always to be blest." 

We grieve for childhood's happy days, 
and long for sweet rest in Heaven and 
sigh for mansions in the skies. And the 
people about us seem so indifferent, and 
our friends so lukewarm ; and really no 
one understands us, and our environment 
queers our budding spirituality and the 
frost of jealousy nips our aspirations : 
44 O Paradise, O Paradise, the world is 
193 



Wbitman 



growing old ; who would not be at rest 
and free where love is never cold." So 
sing the fearsome dyspeptics of the 
stylus. O enemic he, you bloodless she, 
nipping at crackers, sipping at tea, why 
not consider that although the evolution- 
ists tell us where we came from, and the 
theologians inform us where we are going 
to, yet the only thing we are really sure 
of is that we are here ! 

The present is the perpetuality moving 
spot where history ends and prophecy 
begins. It is our only possession : the 
past we reach through lapsing memory, 
halting recollection, hearsay, and belief ; 
we pierce the future by wistful faith or 
anxious hope, but the present is beneath 
our feet. 

Whitman sings the beauty and the 
glory of the present. He rebukes our 
groans and sighs — bids us look about on 
every side at the wonders of creation, and 
at the miracles within our grasp. He 
lifts us up, restores us to our own, intro- 
duces us to man and Nature and thus 
194 



TMlbitman 



infuses into us courage, manly pride, 
self-reliance, and the strong faith that 
conies when we feel our kinship with God. 

He was so mixed with the universe that 
his voice took on the sway of elemental 
integrity and candor. Absolutely honest, 
this man was unafraid and unashamed, 
for Nature has neither apprehension, 
shame nor vain-glory. In Leaves of 
Grass Whitman speaks as all men have 
ever spoken who believe in God and in 
themselves — oracular, without apology, 
without abasement — fearlessly. He tells 
of the powers and mysteries that pervade 
and guide all life, all death, all purpose. 
His work is masculine, as the sun is 
masculine ; for the Prophetic voice is as 
surely masculine as the lullaby and lyric 
cry is feminine. 

Whitman brings the warmth of the sun 
to the buds of the heart so that they open 
and bring forth form, color, perfume. 
He becomes for them aliment and dew ; 
so these buds become blossoms, fruits, 



195 



Wbftman 



tall branches, and stately trees that cast 
refreshing shadows. 

There are men who are to other men 
as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary 
land — such is Walt Whitman. 



196 



THE COMPLETE WORKS OF 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

MOHAWK EDITION 

To be completed in 32 volumes, large 
i2mo, handsomely printed, with illustrations, 
and substantially bound. 

The Mohawk Edition will range in ap- 
pearance with the Hudson Edition of Irving's 
Works, and the volumes will be sold either 
separately or in sets. Broken sets can, there- 
fore, always be made good. 

Price, per Volume, $1.25. 

The Mohawk Edition will comprise the 
complete works as follows : 
Section I. Comprises ; 
[The Deerslayer 



Last of the Mohicans 
The Pathfinder 
The Pioneers 
The Prairie 
The Spy 



Section II. Comprises : 
The Pilot 
Red Rover 
Wing and Wing 
The Water-Witch 
The Two Admirals 
The Sea-Lions 



Precaution Afloat and Ashore 

Lionel Lincoln Wept of Wish-ton- Wish 

Homeward Bound The Bravo 

Home as Found The Hidenmauer 

Mercedes of Castile The Headsman 

The Redskins The Monikins 

The Chainbearer Miles Wallingford 

Satanstoe Jack Tier 

The Crater Oak Openings 

Wyandotte The Ways of the Hour 

The two sections in brackets are now ready. 
Other sections will follow at brief inter- 
vals, until the set is completed. 



Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 



The Philistine : 

A Periodical of Protest. 



• * * Would to God my name -were 
Not so terrible to the enemy as it is / 

Henry VIII. 



Printed Every Little While for 
the Society of The Philistines 
and Publishedby Them Monthly. 
Subscription, One Dollar Yearly; 
Single Copies 10 cents. 

The Philistine and Little Journeys, one 
year, One Dollar. 



"// is very handsome andvery sassy." 

— Boston Herald. 

''It is deliciously impudent" 

— Rochester Herald. 

"It offers a most promising sign" 

—New York Tribune. 



The Philistine is calculated to lay the dust of con- 
vention and drive out the miasma of degeneracy, and 
while assailing the old gods may, in due time, rear 
new ones to the delight of the healthy populace. 

THE PHILISTINE, 
East Aurora, New York. 



rtrtf HE Roy croft Printing Shop 
HI announces the publication 
<^ZJ about Christmas time of an 
exquisite edition of the Song of 
Songs: which is Solomon's; be- 
ing a Reprint of the text together 
with a Study by Mr. Elbert Hub- 
bard ; wherein a most peculiar 
and pleasant effect is wrought 
by casting the Song into dra- 
matic form. 

rThe Study is sincere, but not serious, and 
has been declared by several Learned Per- 
^^sons, to whom the proofsheets have been 
^Lsubmitted, to be a Work of Art. The Volume 
& is thought a seemly and precious gift from 
«^any Wife to any Husband, or from one 
8* Friend to another. 

(HE book is printed by hand, with rubric- 
ated initials and title page, after the Ve- 
netian, on Ruesdael handmade paper. 
The type was cast to the order of the Roy- 
croft Shop, and is cut after one of the 
earliest Roman faces. It is probable that no 
more beautiful type for book printing was ever 
made, and, for reasons known to lovers of books, 
this publication will mark an era in the art of 
printing in America. 

^N. Only six hundred copies, 
0»<V Ali v ^ bound in flexible Japan 

•vSE-fc vellum t have oeen ma de, 
^^^ and will be offered for 
sale at two dollars each, net. There are 
also twelve copies printed on Japan vel- 
lum throughout, which will be sold at five 
dollars each. Every copy is numbered 
and signed by Mr. Hubbard. 

THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP, 
East Aurora, New York. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

nmp 

« on A fifl3 192 1 * 



018 603 192 



>_• <_> rti^/O. 



RECENT 

A KING AND A FEV 

A Romance. By Robert W. Chambers, author of 
" The King in Yellow," " The Red Republic," etc. 
8°, $1.25. 

THE RED REPUBLIC. 

A Romance of the Commune. By Robert W. 

Chambers, author of "The King in Yellow," etc. 

12 , ornamental cover, $1.25. 

" Wonderfully vivid and graphic."— ./V. Y. Press. 

" Dramatic, stirring, and full of adventure."— Buffalo Ex- 
press. 

" Mr. Chambers can do what few men can do, he can tell a 
story." — N. Y. Journal. 

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. 

By Rodrigues Ottolengui, author of "An Artist 

in Crime," etc. (No. 12 in the Hudson Library.) 

12 , $1.00 ; paper, 50c. 

" It is a tribute to the author's skill that he never loses a 
reader. For fertility in imagining a complex plot, and hold- 
ing the reader in ignorance of its solution until the very end, 
we know ofno one who can rival him." — Toledo Blade. 

THE THINGS THAT MATTER. 

By Francis Gribble, author of " The Red Spell," 

etc. (No. 13 in the Hudson Library.) 12 , $1.00; 

paper, 50c. 

"A very amusing novel full of bright satire directed against 
the New Woman, and similar objects. . . . The descriptions 
of life in genteel Bohemia of West Kensington are particularly 
clever. . . . The story contains sketches of literary men 
and women of which we can only say that if they are not 
drawn from life, they ought to have been."— London Speaker. 

THE HEART OF LIFE. 
A Novel. By W. H. Mallock, author of "A Ro- 
mance of the Nineteenth Century," " The New 
Republic," "The New Paul and Virginia," "A 
Human Document," etc. CNo. 14 in the Hudson 
Library.) 12 , $1.25 ; paper, 50c. 
" Interesting, sometimes tender, and uniformly brilliant. 

. . . There are a variety of brilliant threads interwoven with 

the plot. . . . The most successful creation which Mr. 

Mallock has given us. . . . Extraordinary brilliance and 

cleverness."— Daily Telegraph. 

THE BROKEN RING. 

By Elizabeth Knight Tompkins, author of " Her 
Majesty," "An Unlessoned Girl," etc. (No. 15 in 
the Hudson Library.) 12 , $1.00; paper, 50c. 

For Sale by all Booksellers. 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 



